Sunday, November 01, 2009

It's been a while since we've had any work done on the house, but rotting porch steps, a roof letting water into the house, and oceans of standing water on the patio have forced us to take action. We met with our Guy on Saturday and tomorrow some burly men will start tearing off parts of our house. Eep!

BEFORE

Porch steps on their last legs; back of the house, including porch and roof and crawlspace to be rebuilt and patio to be replaced (it's not really that crooked, it's just the photo angle)

Another view of the porch; a hodgepodge of concrete forms our patio

The patio, which a tree root has broken into four pieces

Roof pulling away from the house; the post that supports the entire corner of a two-story house looks like this? and we never noticed??

Outer wall of crawlspace, exposed for the first time after we removed some overgrown shrubs this summer; shingles on the roof disintegrating

Inside the crawl space (yes, the paneling is held on with duct tape, and no, we didn't do that, but we didn't try to fix it, either); another part of the patio, including a sidewalk that doesn't go anywhere

5 comments:

Um, I hate to be an old pessimist, but... something *will* go wrong, LOL! Let's just hope it's timing or something small. (Sorry, too much experience as a homeowner... um, what I meant to say was, relax-- everything will go fine!!)

I feel your pain - we just went through some major renovations. It all started with some minor tuckpointing work. . .

Long story short, a one-day job took six weeks and involved tearing down two brick walls, new brick, replacing the chimney cap, and tearing out the patio and sidewalks on three sides of the house.

The good news is it's done, looks great, and although it was more than we initially thought, if we hadn't done it when we did more damage would have been done and it would have cost a lot more than it did.

Sounds like you've got a good handle on what needs to be done, hopefully there won't be too many surprises, and it's going to be great when it's done. Your house is really cute, and will be even better when that stuff is fixed.

About me!

I recently completed my doctorate in evolutionary biology at the University of Illinois - Chicago. Now I'm living the rural life in Colorado's Front Range with Too Much Coffee Husband, Foley the greyhound, and Sammie the Wonder Mutt.